Wesley Corpus

Remark 2. 'In page 143 you tell us'--the whole paragraph runs thus: 'It is now almost universally supposed that the Moon is just like the Earth, having mountains and valleys, seas with islands, peninsulas and promontories, with a changeable atmosphere, wherein vapours and exhalations rise and fall; and hence it is generally inferred that she is inhabited like the Earth, and, by parity of reason, that all the other planets, as well as the Earth and Moon, have their respective inhabitants.' (I take this to be the very strength of the cause. It was this consideration chiefly which induced me to think for many years that all the planets were inhabited.) 'But after all comes the celebrated Mr. Huygens, and brings strong reasons why the Moon is not, and cannot be, inhabited at all, nor any secondary planet whatever. Then' (if the first supposition sinks, on which all the rest are built) 'I doubt that we shall never prove that the primary are. And so the whole hypothesis of innumerable suns and worlds moving round them vanishes into air.' In order to prove that there are innumerable suns you say,-- (1) 'It is found by observations on the parallax of the Earth's orbit that a fixed star is ten thousand times farther from the Sun than we are.' I can build nothing on these observations, till parallaxes can be taken with greater certainty than they are at present. Therefore I shall want proof that any one fixed star is one thousand times farther from the Sun than we are. (2) 'They are fiery bodies.' I suppose they are; but this cannot be proved from their distance till that distance itself is proved. (3) 'It is demonstrable that Sirius is as big as the Sun.' Demonstrate it who can. (4) 'Seeing the fixed stars are not much less than the Sun, they are to be esteemed so many suns.' 'Not much less'! How is this proved To argue from the distance is to prove ignotum per aeque ignotum. ['A thing unknown by one equally unknown.'] 'You see, sir, the hypothesis of innumerable suns is so far from vanishing into air that it is almost altogether founded on demonstration.' Indeed, I do not see one tittle of demonstration yet from the beginning to the end. In order to prove that the planets are inhabited you say,--